Abstract
The aim of this study is to conduct performance evaluation of a seawater reverse osmosis plant located in Jubail, Arabian Gulf, via the development of theoretical and computational models. A simulation package was used to validate the simulated data against the real plant data, and resulted in good agreement with the actual plant data. A parametric analysis was also performed to study the effect of various parameters for a broad range of design considerations. Most of the previous studies involved the modeling of single-stage RO process; however, in the current work, we investigated both single- and two-stage RO systems. Besides, detailed economic assessment was also conducted in terms of standardization in design and cost analysis by utilizing a theoretical and computational model. Results indicated that with enhancing recovery ratio from 25% to 40%, maximum flux of 34.13 lmh was obtained for single-stage RO system. The economic analysis predicted that fuel ratio corresponded to power utilization factor constitute about 62% of the total cost of the plant. Another important aspect is to calculate the effect of membrane life on TDS values annually and it was concluded that the most stable values were achieved during month of April.